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Stanford Athletics remembers Peter Sauer

PETER SAUER, a co-captain and starter on the 1998 Stanford Final Four basketball team, collapsed and died Sunday night after he fell and hit his head on the concrete court during a pickup basketball game in White Plains, N.Y. He was 35.

The outgoing Sauer, who played four seasons for the Cardinal and graduated with an economics degree in 1999, was part of a five-man recruiting class that played in the NCAA Tournament four consecutive years and won the Pac-10 title in 1999.

“Everyone in the Stanford community is deeply saddened by the passing of Peter Sauer,” said JOHNNY DAWKINS, Stanford’s Anne and Tony Joseph Director of Men’s Basketball. “Peter was a tremendous individual and a devoted husband and father. He was very passionate about Stanford and our basketball program. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife, Amanda, and their three children.”

Sauer was in attendance during Stanford’s NIT championship run at Madison Square Garden in March, and prior to one of the games watched practice before speaking briefly to the team. Sauer, a former Bank of America executive, led an early-morning tour of the bank’s corporate headquarters the following day.

“Meeting him for the first time, you could easily see how invested he was in this program and, really, all of Stanford athletics,” said Dawkins. “Peter truly embodied what it meant to be a Stanford student-athlete. He spoke to our guys about taking full advantage of their opportunities and how attending Stanford is a lifetime decision.”

In the video below, Sauer talked about how the NIT tournament was a good building block for the Cardinal men’s basketball program.